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Original 1960 Group of Cosmo
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| Title |
Original 1960 Group of Cosmonauts |
| Full Description |
The original 1960 group of cosmonauts is shown in a photo from May 1961 at the seaside port of Sochi. The names of many of these men were considered state secrets for more than twenty-five years. Sitting in front from left to right: Pavel Popovich, Viktor Gorbatko, Yevgeniy Khrunov, Yuri Gagarin, Chief Designer Sergey Korolev, his wife Nina Koroleva with Popovich's daughter Natasha, Cosmonaut Training Center Director Yevgeniy Karpov, parachute trainer Nikolay Nikitin, and physician Yevgeniy Fedorov. Standing the second row from left to right: Aleksey Leonov, Andrian Nikolayev, Mars Rafikov, Dmitriy Zaykin, Boris Volynov, German Titov, Grigoriy Nelyubov, Valeriy Bykovskiy, and Georgiy Shonin. In the back from left to right: Valentin Filatyev, Ivan Anikeyev, and Pavel Belyayeu. Four cosmonauts were missing from the photograph, Anatoliy Kartashov and Valentin Varlamov and had both been dropped from training because of injuries. Valentin Bondarenko died in a training accident a few months before. Vladimir Komarov was indisposed. I. Snegirev took the original photo. |
| Date |
05/1961 |
| NASA Center |
Headquarters |
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Gagarin on his way to Vostok
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| Title |
Gagarin on his way to Vostok Launch |
| Full Description |
A pensive Yuri Gagarin is in the bus on the way to the launch pad on the morning of April 12, 1961. Behind him, seated, is his backup, German Titov. Standing are cosmonauts Grigoriy Nelyubov and Andrian Nikolayev. Yuri Gagarin was born on March 9, 1934 in a town outside of Moscow, Russia. After graduating from secondary school in 1949, Gagarin went to several technical schools before joining the Orenburg Higher Air Force School in 1955. He began his cosmonaut training in 1960, along with 19 other candidates. On April 12, 1961 at 9:06 am Gagarin lifted off in the Vostok 1 spacecraft and after a 108-minute flight of extended microgravity, he parachuted safely to the ground in the Saratov region of the USSR. As the first human to fly in space, he successfully completed one orbit around the Earth. After his historic flight, Gagarin became an international symbol for the Soviet space program and in 1963 was appointed deputy director of the Cosmonaut Training Center. In 1966 he served as a backup crewmember for Soyuz 1 and on February 17, 1968, completed a graduate degree in technical sciences. Tragically, during flight training in a UTI-MiG-15 aircraft on March 27, 1968, Gagarin was killed when his plane crashed. |
| Date |
04/12/1961 |
| NASA Center |
Headquarters |
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